In 1892, Alonzo "Lonnie" Clayton became the youngest jockey to win theKentucky Derby at the age of 15.

African American jockeys’ dominance in the world of racing is a history nearly forgotten today. Their participation dates back to colonial times, when the British brought their love of horseracing to the New World. Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson frequented the track, and when President Andrew Jackson moved into the White House in 1829, he brought along his best Thoroughbreds and his black jockeys. Because racing was tremendously popular in the South, it is not surprising that the first black jockeys were slaves. They cleaned the stables and handled the grooming and training of some of the country’s most valuable horseflesh. From such responsibility, slaves developed the abilities needed to calm and connect with Thoroughbreds, skills demanded of successful jockeys.

For blacks, racing provided a false sense of freedom. They were allowed to travel the racing circuit, and some even managed their owners’ racing operation. They competed alongside whites. When black riders were cheered to the finish line, the only colors that mattered were the colors of their silk jackets, representing their stables. Horseracing was entertaining for white owners and slaves alike and one of the few ways for slaves to achieve status.

James Winkfield retired from horse racing in 1930 after a career 2,600 wins.

After the Civil War, which had devastated racing in the South, emancipated African American jockeys followed the money to tracks in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. “African Americans had been involved in racing and with horses since the beginning,” says Anne Butler, director of Kentucky State University's Center for the Study of Kentucky African Americans. “By the time freedom came they were still rooted in the sport.”

The freed riders soon took center stage at the newly organized Kentucky Derby. On opening day, May 17, 1875, Oliver Lewis, a 19-year-old black native Kentuckian, rode Aristides, a chestnut colt trained by a former slave, to a record-setting victory. Two years later William Walker, 17, claimed the race. Isaac Murphy became the first jockey to win three Kentucky Derbys, in 1884, 1890, and 1891, and won an amazing 44 percent of all the races he rode, a record still unmatched. Alonzo "Lonnie" Clayton, at 15 the youngest to win in 1892, was followed by James "Soup" Perkins, who began racing at age 11 and claimed the 1895 Derby. Willie Simms won in 1896 and 1898. Jimmy "Wink" Winkfield, victorious in 1901 and 1902, would be the last African American to win the world-famous race. Murphy, Simms and Winkfield have been inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, New York.

William Walker was already under contract at the age of 11 to an owner named Wood Stringfield and at the age of 13, he claimed a stakes victory.

In 2005, Winkfield was also honored with a Congressional House Resolution, a few days before the 131st Derby. Such accolades came long after his death in 1974 at age 91 and decades after racism forced him and other black jockeys off American racetracks.

Despite Wink’s winning more than 160 races in 1901, Goodwin's Annual Official Guide to the Turf omitted his name. The rising scourge of segregation began seeping into horse racing in the late 1890s. Fanned by the Supreme Court's 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that upheld the "separate but equal" doctrine, Jim Crow injustice pervaded every social arena, says Butler.

“White genteel class, remnants from that world, didn't want to share the bleachers with African American spectators, though blacks continued to work as groomers and trainers," she says.

At the age of 14, James "Soup" Perkins won the Latonia Oaks. The Times called him "the best lightweight jockey of the West."

Racism, coupled with the economic recessions of the period, shrunk the demand for black jockeys as racetracks closed and attendance fell. With intensified competition for mounts, violence on the tracks against black jockeys by white jockeys prevailed without recourse. Winkfield received death threats from the Ku Klux Klan. Anti-gambling groups campaigned against racing, causing more closures and the northern migration of blacks from southern farming communities further contributed to the decline of black jockeys.

Isaac Murphy was one of America's first sports stars. At the age of 14, he rode his first race at Louisville in 1875.

Winkfield dealt another serious blow to his career by jumping a contract. With fewer and fewer mounts coming his way, he left the United States in 1904 for Czarist Russia, where his riding skills earned him celebrity and fortune beyond his dreams. Fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, he moved to France, raced for another decade and retired in 1930 after a career 2,600 wins. In 1940, Nazis seized his stables, causing Winkfield to return to States, where he signed on to a Works Progress Administration road crew. Back in France by 1953, he opened a training school for jockeys. In 1961, six decades after winning his first Kentucky Derby, Winkfield returned to Kentucky to attend a pre-Derby banquet. When he and his daughter Liliane arrived at Louisville's historic Brown Hotel, they were denied entry. After a long wait and repeated explanations that they were guests of Sports Illustrated, they were finally admitted. Wink died 13 years later in France.

After his 1903 run in the Kentucky Derby, black Americans practically disappeared from Goodwin’s official list of jockeys. In 1911 Jess Conley came in third in the derby and in 1921, Henry King placed tenth. Seventy-nine years would pass before another African American would ride in the Derby. Marlon St. Julien took seventh place in 2000.

Willie Simms won the Kentucky Derby in 1896 and 1898. Simms also changed the sport of horse racing when he introduced the natural American riding style to England.

"I'm not an activist,” says St. Julien, who admitted during an interview a few years ago that he didn’t know the history of black jockeys and “started reading up on it.” Reached recently in Louisiana, where he is racing the state circuit, he says “I hope I’m a role model as a rider to anyone who wants to race."

Longtime equestrian and Newark, New Jersey, schoolteacher Miles Dean would agree that not enough is known about the nation’s great black jockeys. In an effort to remedy that, he has organized the National Day of the Black Jockey for Memorial Day weekend. The event will include educational seminars, a horse show, parade, and memorial tribute. All events will be held at the Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville.

Last year, Dean rode his horse, Sankofa, a 12-year-old Arabian stallion, in a six-month journey from New York to California. He spoke at colleges and communities to draw attention to African American contributions to the history and settlement of the United States.

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History on Trial: Culture Wars And The Teaching Of The Past From the History Network News , on 7 November 2004, "Lynne Che...

Capoeira

African Martial Arts of Brazil

About the Banjo by Tony Thomas

The banjo is a product of Africa. Africans transported to the Caribbean and Latin America were reported playing banjos in the 17th and 18th centuries, before any banjo was reported in the Americas. Africans in the US were the predominant players of this instrument until the 1840s.

Charleston Slave Tags and Slave Badges

Badge laws existed in several Southern cities, urban centers such as Mobile and New Orleans, Savannah and Norfolk; the practice of hiring out slaves was common in both the rural and urban South. But the only city known to have implemented a rigid and formal regulatory system is Charleston.

MANILLA: MONEY OF THE SLAVE TRADE

Manilla. Manillas were brass bracelet-shaped objects used by Europeans in trade with West Africa, from about the 16th century to the 1930s. They were made in Europe, perhaps based on an African original.Once Bristol entered the African trade, manillas were made locally for export to West Africa.

SLAVE CURRENCY: African Slave Trade Beads

In Africa, trade beads were used in West Africa by Europeans who got them from Venice, Holland, and Bohemia. They used millions of beads to trade with Africans for slaves, services, and goods such as palm oil, gold, and ivory. The trade with Africans was so vital that some of the beads were made specifically for Africans.

Slave Trade Currency: Cowry Shells

Long before our era the cowry shell was known as an instrument of payment and a symbol of wealth and power. This monetary usage continued until the 20th century. If we look a bit closer into these shells it is absolutely not astonishing that varieties as the cypraea moneta or cypraea annulus were beloved means of payments and eventually became in some cases huge competitors of metal currencies.

Bunce Island Slave Factory

Cannons with the Royal Crest

Adanggaman

Africans Making Slaves of Africans

Ota Benga The Man in the Bronx Zoo

Ota Benga (1883-1916) was an African Congolese Pygmy, who was put on display in the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo in New York in1906

Railroads and Slave Labor

North America's four major rail networks — Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific and Canadian National — all own lines that were built and operated with slave labor.

Sculptor Augusta Savage

"Lift every voice and sing" by Augusta Savage: New York World's Fair.

Afro-Uruguay Spirit of Resistance in Candombe

In the streets of Montevideo, Uruguay, Afro-Uruguayans celebrate an often-ignored part of their history - Candombe and resistance.

Tintin: Sinister Racist Propaganda

Tintin has been an inspiration for generations. But his status as a paragon of wholesome adventure is under threat, thanks to a court bid to ban one of his books, Tintin in the Congo, for its racist portrayal of Africans.

W.E.B. DuBois

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." -- W.E.B. DuBois

Slave Tortures

Portugal Slave Trade

1501-1866 Portugal transported 5,848,265 people from Africa to the Americas.

French Slave Trade

1501-1866 France transported 1,381,404 Africans to America.

Great Britain Slave Trade

1501-1866 The British transported 3,259,440 Africans to the Americas.

Spain Slave Trade

1501-1866 Spain transported 1,061,524 Africans to the Americas

Denmark Slave Trade

1501-1866 Denmark transported 111,041 people from Africa.

United States Slave Trade

1501-1866 The USA transported 305,326 Africans to the Americas.

Netherlands Slave Trade

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?" — Marcus Tullius Cicero